Writing with your dad…writing with your daughter

Father and daughter Luke and Laura Jennings have written a book, the first in a new series, set in a stage school. What's it like writing a book with your dad? And why did Luke suggest the idea to 13-year-old Laura? Father and daughter explain

When my dad suggested that we write a book together I remember thinking: is he serious? I was in year six at school, and I'd never even written a proper essay. How could I help him write a whole novel?

But when we started working out the storyline, I realised that it could be fun. I'd always liked making up stories – when I was younger I used to have conversations with myself, taking it in turns to be each character, making up back-stories for each of them. My brothers thought I was crazy, sitting on the floor talking to myself in different voices. "So what are you doing today, Susie?" I'd ask. "Oh, I'm just doing the school run, Millie, then I'll be joining my husband at the space station. He's an astronaut". I also had several invisible dogs to look after, which took up a lot of my time.

The plot of Stars started off as a mishmash of ideas. What I wanted was for it to be about four girls that I could relate to. If I'm late back from school I get worried voice-mails from Mum, so we put them in a boarding school to get the parents out of the way so they could have proper adventures. I've always loved acting and singing, and Dad used to be a dancer, so it had to be a stage school.

Making up the characters was really exciting. Jess was the central one. She's unsure of herself, thinks she's plain, and isn't proud of her bum! Like any new girl, she's intimidated by all the talented, big-personality types around her. Foxy, on the other hand, is the super-confident girl we'd all like to be. Ash is the princess of the group, the sensible one who tries to keep them all on track, and Spike is the wackiest – she's deaf and a ballet dancer.

We did disagree on stuff. Not storylines but details. For example we argued for over a week about Ash's hair. She's half Ghanaian, and I wanted her to have an afro and Dad wanted "a short, fashionable bob". I mean, does that even exist? But in the end, it all went quite smoothly. Getting a publisher was really cool, so was having meetings at Puffin. I'd rush home from school and change into jeans and a leather jacket, and we'd sprint to the tube. And then there was the launch party. Studded high heels and a galaxy-print dress, if you were wondering…

Over to Luke

Aged 11, Laura was a picky reader. She was suspicious of books set in "the past" (any era preceding the mid-1990s), flatly uninterested in the tales of boy-wizards bequeathed to her by her two older brothers, and dismissive of most pre-teen fiction ("all those cliché divorces"). Instead, she subsisted on the sugar-rush of girly stories that could be consumed at a sitting. Pink-jacketed, breathless, and liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks, these were pleasurable but unchallenging. And eventually Laura got fed up with them.

"So what kind of thing are you looking for?" I asked her, as we poked around our local bookshop. Laura's answer was specific. Realistic, up-to-date stories about teenagers that weren't patronising, or full of "stuff we'd never say". And preferably, since she loved singing and acting, set against a theatrical background. The more we talked, the more minutely detailed her requirements became. And the less likely it seemed that we'd find what she wanted. "So why don't we just go home and write this book?" I suggested. Laura looked at me warily. "OK" she said.

It was a new departure for both of us. I'd trained as a dancer and spent 10 years on stage, so I knew the theatre world. I wrote about dance for the Observer newspaper and I'd had three novels published. But I'd never written for children, nor did I know of anyone who'd co-authored a book with a child. So Laura and I made up our own ground-rules. Story meetings would be fully professional in tone. They would take place in the local high street café, and the usual limits on whipped cream, marshmallows, and sprinkles would be suspended. Laura would need proper work-clothes, specifically a leather-look zip-up top which was on sale at H&M (£24.99). And some ankle boots, obviously.

We got to work. The setting for the story, we decided, would be a stage school. A boarding stage school (essential to get rid of the parents). Our lead characters took shape. We agreed on Jess from day one. She was our narrator, a kind of everygirl figure, awed and slightly intimidated by the talent surrounding her. "She should arrive in the middle of the school year, so everyone's already made friends." Laura suggested. "And let's give her really difficult hair".

Then there was Ash, mixed-race, a fabulous singer and a bit of a princess. "Pink button-up nightie" said Laura. "And her timetable Blu-tacked to her bedside locker". And Foxy, the glamourpuss daughter of TV executives. We'd lived in Surrey for a time, and agreed that Foxy's family lived in Weybridge. "She has a mohair coat" Laura decided. "All the others have rain-jackets and parkas but Foxy has a proper, tailored coat".

And perhaps my favourite of the four room mates, Spike. A ballet-girl, deaf since birth. Over the years I'd often thought of writing about a character who never speaks, who expresses herself physically rather than verbally. Which of course is what dancers do. Spike became the distillation of many people I'd known and worked with, and although I never met her, there was a deaf girl called Nina Falaise who became a ballet dancer around the time that I did. She couldn't hear, she explained to people, but she could feel the vibrations of the music.

While we were writing the book Laura was in two school plays, and quickly learnt to watch her fellow actors, most of them older than her, and to note how they behaved. I talked to her friends, absorbing the way that they'd overlaid their London accents with the Mean Girls Valley-speak of the movies they'd grown up with ("I know, right?"). One way or another, it all went in.

Our working method was straightforward. We would decide on a section of storyline, and I would write it up. Laura would then pick through it, occasionally shaking her head pityingly. "Dad, this is tragic" she'd sigh, her fingers dancing over the keyboard. For Laura, establishing character was a top-down operation. The first thing that had to be fixed was the hair. Foxy's took the longest to get right. "Can't it just be long and red?" I pleaded. "Dad, please. Don't be naïve" Laura murmured, scrolling through page after page of Google Images. And finally, there was Foxy's hair, styled exactly as Laura had envisioned it, and flowing from the head of the teenage Nicola Roberts, in a picture taken before she found fame with Girls Aloud.

Somewhere along the line we called the book Stars. I learnt, early on, to trust Laura's instincts about what would and wouldn't work for her age group, and she, in her turn, knew that she was a real partner in the creative process. Writing fiction's a grind, and there were days and weeks when Laura had other things on her plate. But then she'd re-engage. And suddenly most of Stars was written, and it was time to see if it had a future. I emailed the work-in-progress to Jo Unwin, an agent who specialised in children's books, telling Laura that even if Jo wasn't interested, we'd finish it and print out copies for her friends. Weeks passed, and finally a reply dropped into my inbox. Fingers tightly crossed, we opened Jo's email. "Love it. Finish it. But take out the swearing and the laxative sequence".

Three months later Jo, now officially our agent, sent the book out to publishers, and we knew that this was it. Jess, Ash, Foxy and Spike were out there, fighting for their existence in a cut-throat marketplace. When Jo rang, it was with good news. Three publishers were interested, and Puffin had made a pre-emptive offer. We accepted, and although Laura was briefly disappointed that she couldn't have her half straight away in cash, I knew we couldn't have hoped for a better result. A couple of days later Laura took the afternoon off school, and we went with Jo to meet our publisher Sarah Hughes at the imposing HQ of Penguin Books, Puffin's parent company. As we sat around a table in a conference room decorated with famous Puffin book covers, listening to Sarah's plans for the Stars series (as it now seemed to have become), I wondered, once again, if this was all too much to lay on the shoulders of a 13-year-old. Would the attention freak her out? If there were signings and interviews, would it go to her head?

Deep down, I knew she'd be fine. Laura wasn't averse to the spotlight - she was quite prepared, at mealtimes, to belt out Rihanna's Diamonds until physically gagged by her brothers – but her feet were firmly on the ground. As we left Penguin she turned to me thoughtfully. "Dad, I think we need to talk about my outfit for the launch party".